Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said yesterday that over the next five years he would personally push through the most ambitious changes to British democracy since the early 19th century, prompting criticism that he was raising expectations he would be unable to fulfil.

From his base in the Cabinet Office, Clegg appears to be putting himself at the head of a set of reforms ranging across crime, political reform, party funding, local government funding and security.

Within a day of becoming prime minister in 2007 Gordon Brown promised a programme of constitutional reform that ended up in the sand owing to civil service objections, technical drafting, ministerial indifference and the absence of a cross-party consensus.

Alan Johnson, a former home secretary, dismissed Clegg's plans as rampant hyperbole and Lord Falconer, a former lord chancellor, warned Clegg that he risked reducing trust in politics by raising expectations that could not be met.

The deputy prime minister said he intended his reforms to be introduced within the lifetime of one parliament and said it was his intention that the next election be conducted by the alternative vote, in which electors rank candidates by preference and MPs have to gain at least 50% of the votes.

Clegg, who met Lib Dem colleagues yesterday to discuss the timetable for a referendum on AV, has previously called it a "baby step" and not a proportional system, but yesterday – reflecting the realities of the coalition – he described AV as "a major step forward that would break decades of deadlock over voting reform".

Aides to the Liberal Democrat leader said the bill enabling a referendum would be accompanied by a speeded-up boundary review designed to cut the number of MPs, so that it would be possible to complete the whole process of a referendum and boundary review within five years.

Clegg said he and David Cameron were relaxed about the fact that they would probably be arguing against one another in the referendum.

In what he described as the most significant reforms in 178 years, Clegg pledged to abolish the national identity card scheme, biometric passports and the Contact Point children's database, ensure CCTV was "properly regulated", and place restrictions on DNA storage.

He promised: "This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against the illegitimate advances of the state. I'm talking about the most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great enfranchisement of the 19th century, the biggest shakeup of our democracy since 1832, when the Great Reform Act redrew the boundaries of British democracy, for the first time extending the franchise beyond the landed classes."

In the face of Tory opposition, he promised that a planned commission into the future of human rights legislation would not end up with the principles of the European convention on human rights being abandoned in Britain. Clegg also glided over Lib Dem plans to end control orders, saying instead: "We will introduce safeguards to prevent the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation."

Asked if he planned to allow the Lords to be filled with 100 new Lib Dem and Tory peers, he said he "wanted to reform rather than stuffing the Lords".

Clegg used his speech to respond to critics of plans to make it harder for MPs to force out the government if it were defeated on a vote of confidence. A proposed requirement for a 55% majority of MPs to agree to a dissolution of parliament before the end of its five-year term would help ensure stability, he said.

"That is a much lower threshold than the two-thirds required in Scottish parliament but it strikes the right balance for our parliament, maintaining stability, stopping parties from forcing a dissolution to serve their own interest," he said.Clegg also promised to reform the funding of political parties to end the culture of big donors, adding that he wanted to see people given powers to remove corrupt MPs.